eXing TEDx

TED is… TED is…. OK, I’m actually having a seriously hard time defining this… thing. And the site isn’t very helpful. So, as far as I can gather, TED was a conference in 1984, that brought together people from the Technology, Entertainment and Design industries for the Technology, Entertainment and Design industries people. It’s become a non-profit (owned by the Sapling Foundation), which holds double-annual conference, traditionally held in Long Beach and Palm Springs and Edinburgh, Scotland (but they’d rather say “Edinburgh, UK”, mind you). The goal of TED is to “spread great ideas”, they call those “ideas worth spreading”.

TEDx – The Image of a Perfectly Western World

Ironically, I fell in love with TED because of Ken Robinson. Now that is an idea worth spreading. I fell out of love with TED, because it generally has a Tech/Ent/Des approach to “doing good”, which tends to make its rather white and posh audiences (and founder and white dude, Chris Anderson, who grew up in Pakistan to medical missionary parents) feel good about themselves. And if this can be done by a person of color, well you got yerself the image of a perfect world. And all you had to do was tan in palm springs.

TED has a program called TEDx. The X apparently stands for “independently organized TED event”, and the idea is to “give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.” It isn’t patronization, because TED has “Bias-free programming: Lack of any commercial, religious or political agenda.” You can “secure a TED license” to organize that TED-like experience, but you must be sure to not be “associated with controversial or extremist organizations”, and not to “promote spiritual or religious beliefs, commercial products or political agendas”. And they say centrists have no agendas…
But to me, TED’s messiest affair was the TEDxHolyLand event, followed by a string of other events such as TEDxTelAviv and others we will soon get to. TEDxHolyLand was a normalization disaster, as PACBI and UTAP stated:

This initiative is one more arrogant attempt to equate between; colonizer and colonized; oppressor and oppressed ;victim and executioner. The mere fact that TED’s Palestinian partner [Hannan Kattan] is unable to confront [Liat] Aaronson [the Israeli partner] with the reality of her displaced people is proof enough of the inequality and bias this program is based upon.

This is not normalization, this is a chance to understand each other better, so that we can perhaps move beyond our preconceived notions and entrenched apprehensions.

And the Palestinian Kattan went on to say:

Basically, what we’d like to do is to build on TelXholyland to create an environment for Palestinians and Israeli speakers to come together to talk in a non-political environment and in a safe environment…

I don’t know what makes a non-political environment a safe one. It seems to me that a non-political environment is an environment in denial. And where there is silence, there’s an unmarked grave.

On April 26, Saranga will take this idea getting messages and ideas across through social networks a step further, when, together with the organizers of the TEDxTelAviv event, he will help to spread a list of Israeli ideas around the world via social networks. [Globes, above]

Bezeq– The Israeli telecommunications company that built and provides telecommunication infrastructure and services throughout the West Bank and Golan Heights And is partially owned by Haim Saban, Friend of the IDF.

Pelephone– Bezeq’s subsidiary, with close to two hundred antennas and telecommunication infrastructure facilities on occupied land in the West Bank and the Golan Heights. It provides cellular communication services to the settlers and Israeli soldiers in the occupied territory.

Globes [Hebrew]– A financial newspaper in Israel, partially owned by Eliezer Fishman of the Fishman Group, that happens to be invested in Jerusalem Economic, which owns and rents out industrial and commercial space in the West Bank and Golan Heights, including more than 58,000 sqm of industrial space in Mishor Edumin, which is the industrial zone of the Ma’ale Edumin settlement in the West Bank, and additional 74,000 sqm in Atarot, which is an industrial zone in the West Bank.

Tishbi– A winery and owner of vineyards. The company has vineyards in Gush Etzion in the occupied West Bank. The company also holds shares of Gush Etzion Wineries, which is in the West Bank settlement of Efrata.

TEDxJaffa- Desire to Continue Not Seeing the Other

A lot of coexistence talk with TEDxJaffa– “The Desire to Know the Other”:

With speakers including a doctor of neuropsychology talking about brain mechanisms that enable empathy, a grassroots community organizer bringing Israelis across the Green Line for encounters with their Palestinian peers, founder of an interfaith encounter association that uses faith as the starting point for cross-cultural dialogue and a diplomat speaking about knowing The Other via the framework of diplomacy, among many others, the evening’s program is sure to stimulate ideas worth spreading – and we invite you to join us.

As I’m writing, another sponsor has been added, Portal Yaffo [Hebrew], a site promoting culture and tourism in Jaffa. Looks innocent enough, so I desperately looked into who’s behind the site. Here’s what I found:

Sent by: Arie Shefer
Subject: Personal Safety in Yaffo
Date: 24/6/2011 17:48:28
Message:
Indeed there is anger among some of the Arabs of Yaffo, because of rise in prices, which in many cases doesn’t allow those who were born here to acquire an asset for themselves. The tention exists, in my humble opinion it’s not nationalist, but as a result of economic gaps, that are very apparent in Yaffo.
Of course there are those that jump on the band wagon, on both sides by the way, but generally- there’s good neighborly relations, there’s no fear and the personal safety, as long as the local codes of behavior are respected, very good.

Arie

So, who profits from the occupation? Too many goddamn people without a doubt, including TED. Obviously I’ve got tons of criticism about TEDx events in Israel. I’ve also got tons of criticism about TED and I don’t like the “entrepreneurial approach” to solving problems in the world. I think TED creates a hierarchy of what’s “worth” spreading and what isn’t. That said, the BDS movement has appealed to worse, so here goes:

TED, revoke your license from TEDxJaffa, or demand that it not be used for whitewashing of warcrimes and profiteering off of occupation and apartheid.